The present invention relates to a broadcasting and communication receiver apparatus which receives information about a transmission program together with video and audio data, decodes and displays the program-associated data and more particularly, to a receiver apparatus which can display program-associated information.
In a prior art television signal receiver apparatus, program information such as the title, start and end times of a broadcasting program has not been transmitted together with video and/or audio signal and thus it has been impossible to display these information on a television display screen. For this reason, TV viewers have acquired these information from a program schedule chart run in newspaper.
Further, digital broadcasting has been being started in which digitized signals in place of conventional analog TV signals are transmitted to each home via satellite, cable or land-based broadcasting. Satellite broadcasting has been already realized in such a manner and, even in Japan, plans have been already in the works for start of such service. In the digital broadcasting, various sorts of additional information can be transmitted simultaneously with digitized video and audio signals. When such additional information can be used to prepare a program schedule chart.
Meanwhile, even in the conventional analog broadcasting, when such a system is employed that program-associated information is multiplexed during vertical blanking interval, a program chart similar to that in the digital broadcasting case can be prepared.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a multiplex system of an analog broadcasting type, in which SA denotes an audio signal, SV a video signal, SP program-associated information such as a title, start and end times of a broadcasting program. Reference number 1 denotes a multiplexer for multiplexing the video signal SV and the program-associated information SP, numeral 2 denotes a modulator for modulating the video signal SV and the audio signal SA into broadcasting electromagnetic wave.
In the analog broadcasting system, there is employed a method for multiplexing the program-associated information SP during the vertical blanking interval. However, the amount of information capable of multiplexing during the vertical blanking interval is small when compared with the amount of information transmittable in the digital broadcasting system. In the analog broadcasting system, further, with respect to its screen displaying function, its screen displaying ability as well as the amount of information to be handled are restricted. Therefore, the display screen implemented based on the analog broadcasting system is inferior in presentation ability to that based on the digital broadcasting system.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a multiplex system of a digital broadcasting type, in which reference symbols 3A, 3B and 3P denote encoders for encoding the audio and video signals and program-associated information respectively. In the digital broadcasting system, the audio signal SA, video signal SV and program-associated information SP are encoded and compressed respectively by the encoders 3A, 3B and 3P, and then subjected by the multiplexer 1 to a time division multiplexing operation to obtain a multiplexed signal. The multiplexed signal is modulated by the modulator 2 into broadcasting electromagnetic wave.
The digital broadcasting system is featured in that, since the program-associated information SP is encoded and compressed by the encoder 3P, more signals can be multiplexed than the program-associated information multiplexable in the analog broadcasting system.
When it is desired to display such program-associated information as program chart on a predetermined display zone of a display screen, e.g., a television display screen, if a display zone necessary for full display of all the display data is larger than the predetermined display zone, then all the display data cannot be fully displayed on the limited display zone. For this reason, there disadvantageously occurs such a situation that part of the originally-displayable information is missing.